Dear {{CFirstName}},

As this newsletter reaches you, we are on the eve of our 2026 Annual Conference, Elevating Excellence. Many of you are already traveling, preparing to join us in Denver, or making plans to participate virtually. I am especially pleased to share that this year’s conference reflects how strongly our community has embraced this theme, with record engagement across all events, including 638 attendees registered for the in‑person conference, 70 participants for the Virtual Conference, and 25 programs represented at the Admissions Summit.

This edition is intended to support you as we enter an important moment in our CAPCSD year, while also highlighting ways to stay engaged beyond the conference. Inside, you will find reminders about conference events, including the Annual Business Meeting, along with updates on elections, revised CFCC standards, admissions resources and practices with a DEIB‑focused perspective on admissions decision-making, and professional development opportunities. We are also proud to celebrate our 2026 scholarship and grant recipients, whose achievements reflect the strength and future of our member programs.

Whether you are joining us in person, online, or following along from your campus, thank you for your continued commitment to CAPCSD.

Important Dates

Below are the upcoming important dates so that you may plan accordingly. Dates are subject to change. CAPCSD will send separate email for each of the below dates with official information.

CAPCSD Annual Business Meeting 

Attend CAPCSD's upcoming 2026 Annual Business Meeting to hear from the Board of Directors on the accomplishments, work in progress, and what's coming down the pike. It's a great way to learn about CAPCSD activities.

Saturday, April 11, 2026

7:50 AM MT - 10:00 AM MT

General Session includes Annual Business Meeting

Hyatt Regency Denver at Colorado Convention Center

Meeting Room: Centennial A-D

Honors & Awards Announcements 

CAPCSD’s Honors and Awards program highlights individuals whose leadership, scholarship, mentorship, and service have made a meaningful impact on academic programs and the field of communication sciences and disorders. This annual recognition reflects CAPCSD’s commitment to excellence and innovation in education, research, and professional service.

Conference attendees are invited to join CAPCSD in celebrating the achievements and contributions of this year’s distinguished honorees.

Click here to see the winners. Honors and Awards - Council of Academic Programs in Communication Sciences | CAPCSD

2026 Scholarships & Grant Recipients 

We are excited to announce our 2026 CAPCSD Scholarship and Grant recipients! Each year, we provide financial support to outstanding graduate students and faculty who demonstrate exceptional service, academic promise, and commitment to advancing the fields of communication sciences and disorders. With scholarship and grant distributions surpassing $1 million in total support awarded, we continue to uplift future clinicians, researchers, academic leaders, and faculty innovators across our member institutions. Please join us in celebrating these exceptional award winners.

We also extend our sincere appreciation to all who applied this year. We received a strong number of submissions across all categories, and we are grateful for the dedication and passion reflected in every application.

IVS Clinical Education Seed Grant

Sunjung Kim Thao, Ph.D., CCC-SLP- University of Central Arkansas

Plural Publishing Research Scholarships

Casey Schulkind- Master's/AuD Degree Awardee- Emerson College

Emily Goldberg- PhD Awardee- University of Pittsburgh

Frances J. Laven Service Award

Claire Bretschneider- University of Delaware

Heysell Cruz Pacas- Pacific University

Alexia Hopkins- University of South Carolina

Chanel Hudson- University at Buffalo

Carissa Kautz- University of Texas at Dallas

Elizabeth Perry- Moravian University; Speech-Therapy and Accent Group, Inc.

Robyn Rachelle Rayford- Augusta University

Tahreem Shakeel- University of the Pacific

Sara Smith- University of Washington

Kinga Suto- California State University, Northridge

Ph.D. Research Scholarships

Brittany Ciullo- University of Massachusetts-Amherst

Andrea DeFreese- Vanderbilt University

Namitha Jain- University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Lindsey Kummerer- University of South Florida

Katherine Menzie- University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Sophia Nichols- The Ohio State University

Ching-Hsuan Peng- Purdue University

Marissa Russell-Meill- Boston University

Yusheng Wang- SDSU/UCSD Joint Doctoral Program in Language and Communicative Disorders

Shengyue Xiong- Northwestern University

CAPCSD Board of Directors 2026-2027 Slate

You can find more information on Ashley Harkrider here.

Revised CFCC Standards

Call for Resolutions

The Board of Directors gathers input on issues of importance to the membership of CAPCSD throughout the year. If you, individually or in concert with colleagues, have ideas or issues that you believe the Board of Directors should address, please formulate, and submit a resolution for consideration. Resolutions may be submitted by any member program or individual of a member program. Submitted resolutions will be discussed at the next regularly scheduled board meeting unless a quorum is not met. 

Resolution Format

Title: Brief descriptive title for the resolution
Background: A sequence of logically ordered “Whereas” statements.
Resolved: Detailed description of proposed position, action, investigation, initiative, etc. that the resolution sponsors would like the Board of Directors to pursue.
Sponsored by: Name(s) and program affiliations of the resolution sponsor(s).

Submission Process

Submit a resolution any time during the year by email or USPS to:

Ned Campbell, Executive Director 

ned@capcsd.org

CAPCSD, P.O. Box 929, Indian Hills, CO 80454-0929 

Annual Conference | Elevating Excellence | April 8-11, 2026

2026 Virtual Conference

From the 2026 Annual Conference in Denver, CO, CAPCSD is presenting the 2026 Virtual Conference on April 9-10, 2026. This virtual conference will feature 10 hours of online sessions by invited speakers and selected presenters on the conference theme, Elevating Excellence.

• Earn up to 1.0 ASHA and AAA CEUs
• Available live only
• Not available on-demand
• As these sessions are also breakout sessions during the annual conference, there will not be an Add-On option for those attending the annual conference.

Thursday, April 9, 2026

10:15 AM MT - Helping Students Master Professional Practice Behaviors: Elevating Student Success through Clinical Education [Kelly Harrington, Lisa McDonald] 

11:30 AM MT - Threading the Access Needle: Supporting Disability Inclusion in Communication Sciences and Disorders [Madhu Sundarrajan] 

12:45 PM MT - Beyond the Basics: Elevating Excellence in Asynchronous Online Graduate Education [Klaire Brumbaugh, Lauren Wright Jones] 

2:15 PM MT - Innovate, Educate, Publish: A Guide to SoTL and Simulation [Amanda Stead]

3:30 PM MT - Problem-Based Learning Across Disciplines: Discomfort as a Catalyst for Interprofessional Growth [Mikaely Schmitz]

Friday, April 10, 2026

10:15 AM MT - Preparing CSD Students for Trauma-Informed, Interprofessional Collaboration [Emily Weston] 

11:30 AM MT - Creating Equitable Faculty Workloads [Caitlin Al-Mutawa, Charlotte King] 

12:45 PM MT - CATALYST: Embedding Critical Thinking Instruction Across Undergraduate and Graduate CSD Coursework [David Rehfeld] 

2:15 PM MT - Financial Literacy for Students [Victor Bray, Robert Serianni]

3:30 PM MT - To AI or Not to AI, That is the Question. AI Ethics in CSD [AnnMarie Knight, Becky Jones]

$225 CAPCSD Member

$225 CAPCSD Affiliate Member

$275 CAPCSD Non Member

DEIB

From Service Learning to Participatory Action: A Process for Equity-Centered Engagement in CSD Education

A structured participatory action process can help. Participatory action methods, rooted in well-established participatory action research (PAR) frameworks, involves iterative cycles of collaboration, reflection, and action, all conducted in partnership with the community. It can shift how we as CSD educators design community engagement that centers equity, shared decision-making, and mutual benefit.

 
While traditional educational frameworks prioritize the knowledge of the faculty member and university, participatory action requires us to share power with the community that is most impacted. It involves co-defining the priorities and action steps of a project with community members, students, and faculty. Then, all these groups act as partners through a cycle of planning, action, studying results, and reflecting to inform the next cycle. Participatory action encourages us to be transparent and accountable to the communities we aim to serve.

Step 1: Building Relationships and Shared Understanding
Begin by listening. Invest time in building trust with community partners before designing community-oriented class assignments or projects. Identify community priorities together, and come to a shared understanding of the problem. This foundational stage challenges assumptions and aligns academic goals with real community needs, establishing a democratic starting point for engagement rather than an extractive one. This takes time. For a capstone or service-learning opportunity, co-defining the problem and community needs might be a full project. 

Step 2: Co-Planning and Shared Decision-Making
With a shared problem statement, faculty, students, and partners co-design the project’s goals, methods, roles, and timelines. In CSD contexts, this might involve collaborations with local schools, disability advocacy groups, or health centers to address barriers to communication access. Planning should explicitly honor community expertise and negotiate power, resources, and expectations upfront. 

Step 3: Action and Implementation
Students and partners implement the plan together. This stage is where classroom knowledge meets lived experience. Actions might include co-creating assessment materials that are linguistically appropriate, conducting community-designed screening events, or iteratively developing telepractice solutions for underserved populations. Throughout implementation, maintain attention to equitable participation and shared ownership of outcomes. Implementation science and improvement science frameworks can guide our planning.

Step 4: Reflection, Evaluation, and Iteration
After action, stakeholders collaboratively examine outcomes, gathering both qualitative and quantitative evidence about what worked, what did not, and why. Reflection includes community and student voices, challenging faculty to adjust assumptions and adapt interventions. This iterative feedback loop drives continuous improvement and deeper equity work in both education and community contexts. 

This participatory action cycle reframes community engagement in CSD as a core pedagogical and ethical practice. It teaches students to consider systemic issues when addressing their clients’ barriers to communication, swallowing and/or hearing needs. By emphasizing relationship-building, shared inquiry, and reflexivity, it helps prepare our graduates to be clinicians and advocates who work with communities to dismantle barriers to communication and hearing health. 

Laura Wolford, PhD, MS CCC-SLP

Admissions Corner

Do Letters of Recommendation Actually Work?

In an age of holistic admissions, letters of recommendation are still common among CSD admission requirements; however, research suggests the tool systematically advantages some applicants while disadvantaging others. Historically, programs commonly use letters of recommendations because it provides a narrative context that could offer insight into future professional behavior. The issue at hand is not intent, rather it is validity.

Newkirk-Turner and Hudsen (2022) found that letters written for Black applicants contained phrases that could negatively influence evaluators. Examples included hedging language and descriptors that emphasized effort over ability.  Critically, it was found that these phrases were not random; they tracked with outcomes. Black applicants who were admitted had fewer biased phrases and those not admitted had more.  

Related research by Cheng et al. (2023) found that Black applicants were more likely to be described as “competent” compared to White applicants who were described as “exceptional.” Moreover, White and Asian applicants were characterized with terms such as “skills” and “leadership.” 

Gendered language patterns were noted. Women were described using “communal” traits such as “hardworking” and “kind.” Compared to men who were described using “agentic” traits such as “leader,” and “exceptional.” Letters of recommendation for women were frequently included doubt-raising language (e.g., “she will likely succeed”), compared to stronger statements of perceived ability for men, (e.g., “he will succeed”). These findings are consistent with earlier work by Madera et al. (2009), which suggests that such patterns are persistent over time. 

Taken together, this raises an important question: Do letters of recommendation work? While they offer narrative insight, the evidence suggests they also reflect systematic differences in how applicants are described based on race or gender. Further, this raises concerns not only about bias, but what these letters actually measure, and if they meaningfully predict future academic and clinical success.

Letters of recommendation may still have a place in admissions, but only if programs are willing to critically evaluate their function. Structured evaluation systems, similar to what already exists in CSDCAS, could be strengthened using the existing Likert rating scale but expanding to have evaluators additionally answer required standardized prompts to justify each score. Alternatively, programs might consider replacing letters altogether with more performance-based indicators.  

As a discipline, CSD must consider whether continued use of letters of recommendations is justified by evidence, rather than tradition. In clinical practice, clinicians do not accept unstandardized, subjective, and bias-prone tools to make decisions. Yet in admissions decisions, programs continue to rely on an uncalibrated measure to shape both entry into the profession and the future of the clinical workforce.

References
Cheng, V.Y., Munson, M., Termini, C.M. (2023). Approaches to address bias in letters of recommendation. Trends in Pharmacological Sciences, 44(6), 321-323. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tips.2023.03.002
Madera, J.M., Hebl, M.R., & Martin, R.C. (2009). Gender and letters of recommendation in academic: Agentic and communal differences. Journal of Applied Psychology, 94(6), 1591-1599. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0016539
Newkirk-Turner, B.L., & Hudson, T.K. (2022). Do no harm: Graduate admissions letters of recommendation and unconscious bias. Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups, 7(2), 463-475. https://doi.org/10.1044/2021_PERSP-20-00117

CSDCAS Configuration Portal is Open!

The CSDCAS configuration portal for the 2026–2027 cycle is now open. Primary contacts responsible for their program’s pre‑launch configurations should have received an email with detailed instructions. If you did not receive this communication, please contact Teasha McKinley, Director of Centralized Admissions (teasha@capcsd.org).

The deadline for completing your program configurations is June 19, 2026.

Steps to Completing Configuration:

1. Log into the Configuration Portal in the WebAdMIT Prelaunch site.
2. Review and edit your program branding, instructional text, prerequisites, and questions, if applicable.
3. Preview your program and hit “Submit for Review” by June 19, 2024.

2026-2027 Applicant Data Report

The 2024-2025 CSDCAS Applicant Data Report is now up on the CAPCSD website. Check it out below.

If you need help with the admissions processes for your MA/MS and/or AuD graduate education programs, or you need help with WebAdMIT or CSDCAS, please do not hesitate to reach out to the Admissions Committee and CAPCSD’s Director of Centralized Admissions.

Admissions Committee Contacts

https://members.capcsd.org/admissionscommittee

Teasha McKinley, Director of Centralized Admissions

teasha@capcsd.org 

If you can't attend the live webinar, register now and receive a recording of the webinar to view at your convenience. Please note, only registrants who attend the live webinar are eligible for ASHA CEUs.

https://www.capcsd.org                                                                                                                                                                                       April 2026